The action would be monumental. This we knew. But then the story would be about the reaction—what voices spoke the loudest when it finally happened. Because it had to happen eventually, didn't it? It just strained common sense to think it would not. This was 2013, for crying out loud, and there still had never been an active openly gay male player in a major U.S. sport. Not in the NBA, the NFL, the NHL or Major League Baseball. It was more than a little embarrassing, especially when you consider the way that sports in this country are puffed up and grandly (and often erroneously) portrayed as a microcosm of society at large. Here was a clear place in which sports lagged behind society. Far behind. It was both ridiculous and depressing.

But sooner or later a player was going to come forward—momentum appeared to be building lately—and this would be historic, a genuine act of courage. But then the narrative would shift to the response, and not really the response of the public at large, but among the player's fellow athletes. This was the important part. Whenever the subject of gay men in pro sports had been discussed, skeptics could reliably be found to ramble incoherently about locker room culture, making the comical suggestion that pro sports weren't ready, that a work environment which had historically been governed by a single rule—if you can play, you play—wasn't equipped for this.

Jason Collins becomes the first active athlete from the major American pro-sports leagues to publicly reveal he is gay. Kevin Clark reports.

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Once in a while an athlete would say something truly regrettable, like the young San Francisco 49er who said during Super Bowl week that he'd have a hard time welcoming a gay player in the locker room, no matter how talented, and though this 49ers player was scolded by the league and his team, you couldn't help but feel that when the issue settled down, such toxic comments only served to perpetuate the problem. The door stayed shut. The wait went on.

And then it finally ended Monday, on the cover of Sports Illustrated—the iconic, original message board of sports—as the active NBA player Jason Collins came out publicly as a gay man. Collins's first-person essay was superb: humanizing, explanatory, often funny. It was everything you'd hoped it would be. And though there was the predictable round of Internet hatefulness, the prevailing opinion from Collins's peer group was almost exuberant in its message:

Welcome.

As in welcome to Jason Collins, the whole person. And welcome to real life for professional sports.

"Don't suffocate who u r because of the ignorance of others," offered Kobe Bryant.

"Jason Collins showed a lot of courage today and I respect him for taking a stand and choosing to live in his truth," wrote Dwyane Wade.

This wasn't a firewall. This was a warm embrace. Further support arrived from fellow pros in football, hockey, baseball. Sure, there continued to be some mystifying close-mindedness—one wonders if a certain ESPN NBA Insider will soon become an NBA outsider—but Collins's announcement didn't provoke the type of meltdown it had long and ludicrously been predicted to provoke. Sports was fine. Sports was cool. Which is exactly what it should be.

You could ask what took so long, and it's a good question. Too long feels just in time now. In his SI story, Collins writes about the gradual way he reached his decision, his inner battles and his quiet signals of solidarity (he wore the No. 98 this season as a private tribute to Matthew Shepard, the gay college student murdered in 1998). Soon to be a free agent, Collins discussed his motivation to keep on playing.

Is this a big deal? Yes. Collins's decision to come forward is significant, despite efforts to diminish it by pointing to his low career scoring average or the six teams he has played for since entering the league. But Collins now owns a stat that matters. Seriously, if you're wondering why you should care, here's why: because no one has done this before. Because Jason Collins decided to take that brave first step. Because it was going to happen and it did. And sports will be better because of it.

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